With haunting prose and deft psychological insight, Averil Dean spins a chilling story that explores the dark corners of obsession—love, pain and revenge.
Ten years ago, someone ruined Alice Croft’s life. Now, she has a chance to right that wrong—and she thinks she’s found the perfect man to carry out her plan.
After watching him for weeks, she breaks into Jack Calabrese’s house to collect the evidence that will confirm her hopes. When Jack comes home unexpectedly, Alice hides in the closet, fearing for her life. But upon finding her, Jack is strangely calm, solicitous…and intrigued.
That night is the start of a dark and intense attraction, and soon Alice finds herself drawn into a labyrinth of terrifying surrender to a man who is more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. As their relationship spirals toward a breaking point, Alice starts to see just how deep Jack’s secrets run—and how deadly they could be.
“Crisply written, wickedly suspenseful….[Alice Close Your Eyes] reads like a dark, sensual nightmare, and it is the reader who won’t want to close her eyes until all of the book’s tantalizing secrets are finally revealed. Don’t miss it.”
—David Bell, author of Never Come Back and Cemetery Girl
Alice Close
Your Eyes
Averil Dean
For my mother.
Every spirit builds itself a house.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
I am inside Jack’s house.
Rain trickles down the windowpanes and a spring thunderstorm rumbles almost inaudibly in the distance as I drift through the blue window light, in and out of the shadows, tracing the objects in the living room with my gloved fingertips. A queen conch shell reclines on the sideboard, its frilled pale pink lip deepening to a slick rose interior as the shell curves in on itself. I pick it up, hold it to my ear. A phantom ocean soughs inside the empty calcium walls. I imagine the bowl filling with surf, overflowing, disappearing under the sand.
The furniture is low and modern, with square brown side chairs and a kidney-shaped coffee table in front of the fireplace. The living room is arranged around a rag-leather area rug, and at one end of the sofa is a floor lamp made from a piece of gnarled, tiger-striped mesquite, stained and rubbed to a satin finish the color of a cinnamon stick. On the wall next to the fireplace hangs a graphic, ceiling-high painting of a raven on its perch.
I circle the room, opening drawers and doors, careful to leave things as I find them. I search the kitchen cabinets and the top shelf of the coat closet, the blanket chest by the door and the bookshelves against the wall, until I find what I came for: a simple wooden box, the contents of which are of no value to anyone but me and the guy who collected them.
A brass clock sits in the center of the mantel, clicking like an old lady’s tongue as I tuck the box under my arm.
Hurry. I hesitate, my eyes on the back door. Hurry.
I cross the room and start down the hallway. To my right, a door is ajar. I give it a gentle push and step through the doorway. The home owner—Jack, I think, loving this, Jack Calabrese—has turned over the second bedroom to his hobby, ships in bottles. The room is lined with shelves bearing elaborate models in heavy glass bottles of different sizes and shapes, and under the window, a worktable is strewn with tiny pieces of wood and lengths of string. It looks like he’s begun work on a new model, and has only gotten as far as laying out the components. I circle the room, running my fingers along the smooth curved glass. I press my nose to the mouth of one of the bottles and inhale. Sawdust, mixed with a briny scent that makes me think he salvaged this bottle from the beach. Together the aromas evoke a shipyard, or a seaside lumber mill. I peer through the bottleneck at the ship inside, its prow aimed right at me.
My thoughts judder to a halt. A key clicks against the front door and slides into the lock.
My heart leaps, stumbles, restarts. Adrenaline flashes through my limbs.
In a second I’m out the door, skidding silently down the hall to the bedroom. I duck around the corner, run to the window and flip the latch. But the sash is fitted with a security lock that prevents it from opening more than a few inches. No sign of the key, and there won’t be time to pick the lock. I turn back to the room in dismay. The bed is low to the ground, no space underneath. No shower curtain in the attached bathroom